It depends on the weather and whther you"re feeding feeders, bred heifers or mature cows and if the later two, the stage of pregnancy.
We live in Western Montana and have a small cow calf operation. We separate the heifers we are developing and the bred heifers from the cows and feed them very well;as much as they"ll eat through out the winter. We"ll switch over to grass/alfalfa in the last trimester of pregnancy to get them in really good shape for calving(bred, first calf heifers) and breeding (yearling heifers- They are going and are going to be "teenage mothers" so they need to be well fed.) Some folks here give them 5 lbs of grain/hd to supplement them but we we don"t.
The mature cows get about 50 lbs of grass( ~4% of body weight per day) untill the last trimester of pregnancy and then we feed them alfalfa/grass at the same rate during the last trimester of their pregnancy.
I"ve found thet feeding cows well (not overfeeding or wasting feed) is the cheapest medicine there is. They stay healthy, have a strong calf, milk well, and re-breed on time.
If the weather gets cold we feed heavier. We watch the cows condition at all times and if we see them getting thin we"ll up the feed.
A good rule of thumb is 4% of body weight per head per day of good hay for mature dry cows ( 1st and 2nd trimesters of pregnacy). 4% mature weight per head per day of 50/50 good quality grass/alfalfa in the last trimester of pregnancy and early lactation. Watch their condition and adjust feeding accordingly. The National Research Council publishes feeding info if you want to really get technically correct with the nutritional needs of cattle so do a web search if you want that kind of info.
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Today's Featured Article - Tuning-Up Your Tractor: Oil, Oil Filter and Air Breather - by Curtis Von Fange. In the preceding articles we discussed some of the various aspects of doing a comprehensive tune up. Hopefully some light was shed on why we do or don't do certain things pertaining to inspections and order of events when doing a tune up. Perhaps some useful reasons were given for why parts fail and what to do about preventing part failure in the future. All these tips will help us think and reason out a problem in order to make our tune up last and, hopefully, keep us from spending extra mone
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